Even though some organizations will feel greater impact from the tightening economy than others will, this is a good time for all to assess IT spending choices. By continuing to invest wisely during a downturn, an organization strengthens its long-term future. Thanks to virtualization technology and outsourcing, there are some obvious "easy wins" in the data center. Collaboration technologies make it easier to be productive without being co-located. Deep within the IT infrastructure, cost can be contained by reducing the number of moving parts and redundancies. In addition, as people and partners move into, out of, and within an organization with greater frequency, well-designed identity management and other security controls for the virtual enterprise add considerable value.

Careful stewardship over existing assets and frugality concerning new investments is good policy—in both weak and strong economic times. Reduced spending doesn't mean that IT has to stand still, but it will force a necessary examination of priorities./a>

Outside the data center, consolidation can also be achieved by:

• Reducing the number of vendors and suppliers, especially of overlapping technology and services.
• Reducing the number of applications installed on users' machines, especially if those applications are not core to the user's job function. This will reduce licensing costs.
• Examining and, where possible, renegotiating new enterprise agreements with major vendors to ensure that unnecessary fat is trimmed.
• Reducing the number of redundant data sources (also related to data management).
• Performing data de-duplication.
• Reducing the amount of business process redundancy.